Social strategies for urban management and urban-environment development in the works of T. M. Dridze and in contemporary Russia

Abstract

In the pre- and early post-reform Russian urban sociology, the works of T.M. Dridze, a prominent Russian sociologist and psychologist, are of a great importance. Her concepts of urban development, social participation and urban environment reflect the democratic approach to urban development and urban social management. Under the dominant liberal, market-oriented urban regulation, this approach was considered almost marginal. However, after the adoption in 2016 of the federal project for developing a ‘comfortable urban environment’, the rhetoric of ‘environment’ and ‘participation’ started to prevail in both society and urban social sciences. The question is whether the ideas and theoretical models of the democratic urban planning started to determine the contemporary urban development. To answer this question, the author clarifies the content of the basic terms used by T.M. Dridze and her interpretation of the relationships between the environment, society and participatory technologies; reveals the methodological role of social participation and defines it as a scale of social practices - from the grassroot ‘activism’ to the ‘participation from above’ initiated by the authorities. The author conducts a conceptualterminological analysis to compare three strategies of urban development: urban construction, urban regulation and urban arrangement, and only the last one seems to be consistently democratic. The analysis of the texts and methods of the federal project allows the author to make conclusions about the certain qualities of this project. Thus, the project replaces the democratic socialenvironmental type of social participation in urban development - planning, implementation, assessment of results - by the improvement of urban areas as controlled by the authorities. This means that the works of T.M. Dridze are still relevant for the democratic urban studies and urban development.